


no need for goodbyes

by pace



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Future Fic, Getting Back Together, M/M, Minor Original Character(s), No Noah :(, Underage Drinking, blasphemy?, pining while in denial
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-17
Updated: 2016-01-12
Packaged: 2018-05-05 21:01:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5390195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pace/pseuds/pace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adam Parrish spends a weekend getting reacquainted with himself, and also Ronan.</p><p>Because not even the Raven Boys can make the transition from high school to college without a few casualties along the way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. your past life's in the backseat

**Author's Note:**

> No archive warnings but does contain very unhealthy academic/life habits and mentions of Adam's parents.

It’s the morning before the last day of classes of fall semester, and when Adam wakes up, Patrick’s girlfriend Sophia is pouring out glasses of champagne for everyone.

Adam tries to sneak past the excitedly chirping crowd that has somehow grown to fill their common room, but nothing gets past Sophia. “Adam!” She reaches out to him by flinging a full glass in his general direction, a gesture she somehow manages without spilling a single drop. Adam wonders if he, too, will learn this strangely specific type of gracefulness once he’s spent as much time holding champagne glasses as Sophia has. It seems useful.

“Let me just, uh," he points with a shrug of his shoulders towards the bathroom. Sophia nods and salutes him with the champagne, which makes it glitter jewel-like in caught sunlight. She turns back to the small knot of people around her.

When Adam finishes brushing his teeth, the small crowd’s chatter has died down. Everyone looks to Patrick for a toast, the way all Adam’s Henrietta friends used to (still do) look to Gansey. The morning light makes everyone look vaguely like they’re swimming in champagne, but with his back to the windows, Patrick is edged in gold.

Adam takes the glass Sophia gives him and leans against the side of the threshold as everyone waits for his old freshman-year roommate to speak

Patrick looks back at the room for a second, back straight, and shoulders broad as ever. Someone begins to whisper something, but Leila, the lit major from two floors down (who also happens to be Adam’s ex-girlfriend, and therefore will never makes direct eye contact with him again), elbows him in the side.

“Another semester done,” Patrick finally says. “Another semester lived well.

“Kevin, my man, finally grown up and got a girlfriend," he points to Kevin, one of the other guys they live with, who blushes from crewneck to widow’s peak. Then, he whirls around to the left. “-and Oscar, my other man, finally grown up and got a boyfriend.”

He continues around the room, addressing each of the people they live with (and a good few of their neighbors) that have gathered to celebrate. Adam is standing next to him, half in the hallway, dreading to be dead last. 

“Sophia Sun, the most beautiful woman in the world," he holds his arm out to Sophia, who’s cross-armed on Adam’s right and radiating skepticism. “The most beautiful, intelligent, and kind woman in the world," he corrects with a crooked grin. She rolls her eyes, but deigns to step around Adam and kiss Patrick on the cheek. “Already with the Bloomberg internship locked in. I’m so lucky to have the chance to be the one on your arm.”

Finally, it’s Adam’s turn. “Adam, I’m not even British, but let me say it’s bloody lucky that we all live with a genius like you. Not to mention, you’re the baddest motherfucker around. If it weren’t for this man right here-“ at that, he slings an arm around Adam’s shoulders and points excitedly. Adam tries to stand his ground and smile, which is hard to do without getting jabbed in the face. “I would’ve _died_ over Thanksgiving break. Y’all would’ve been in search parties in the woods for my body.”

Adam seriously questions why Patrick feels the need to drop “y’all” in his sentences when he rarely steps foot outside New England. He also wonders if “baddest motherfucker” is just a euphemism for “weird blue-collar hick” that knows common things like how to read a map, or how to jump a car without cables, the same way the elder Ganseys used to refer to him with a particular look and “scholarship friend”. Well, he still is the scholarship friend, but he doesn’t know if he’s truly “bad” or a “motherfucker” and if either of those things are really compliments.

Adam is relieved when Patrick finally turns his attention away. “Well done, guys and girls," he says, raising his glass. “You know we’re all coming back for more. Let’s fuck up these finals and kick sophomore year in the ass. See you on the other side, friends!”

They all drink. Adam drinks too, but he can’t help but to scoff at how reckless they all seem, grasping at each other to embrace and yell. Meanwhile, Adam tries to pinpoint what exactly they’re celebrating. It’s Friday, and most people don’t have Friday classes. Therefore, this isn’t even the last day of classes for half the crowd. Then, there’s the fact that they haven’t even taken their finals yet, let alone studied for them. It seems like such a pointless and premature thing.

“It’s nine in the morning," he comments to Sophia, who tugs at him to sit down beside her on the futon.

She tilts her head to fix the lay of her hair, which hangs straight and dark and perfect as always. “We have orange juice - I could make you a mimosa instead.” 

“Hm," is all Adam says. Not exactly what he meant, but Sophia, with her Canada Goose parka and her Fortune 500 father, would never understand. Adam, after all this time, is still jealous of casual displays of wealth. 

They sit there for a minute, surveying their territory (Sophia basically lives here too, since her boyfriend has a single this year while she’s still stuck in a double in Pierson). Adam feels like a terrible killjoy, but all he can think about is how each bottle of bubbly his suitemates are spilling all over each other costs more than what his family used to spend on food for a week. He must do a bad job feigning interest, because Sophia sighs and rests her head on his shoulder.

“Adam, Adam," Sophia says. “No need to be Mr. Responsibility all the time. Finals suck ass for everyone. So we just wanted to help.” To her, it’s so simple.

But if Adam stops being the responsible one, who will step up to take his place?

Still, sitting with Sophia and seeing all his friends smile and enjoy themselves, he feels a little better. Adam doesn’t understand how Sophia can be such a genuinely kind person, yet exude steel and smarts, Goldman and McKinsey, when Adam sacrificed reckless displays of compassion so long ago and still can’t bring himself to resolve to a career of I-banking or consulting.

Adam wills himself to stop overthinking, to observe instead. The weak morning light pours through the wide windows - still stronger than winter light should be thanks to El Niño. The banner grandly proclaiming their commitment to their college and to their futures. The welcoming chatter of a dozen fellow Ivy League students, all on the same wavelength as each other. It sounds like a forest stream, for a second, good-natured and constant, the way Virginia dogwoods smell.

 _I’m here_ , he reminds himself. _Everything's changed, I got what I wanted._ The familiar warmth washes over him then. It’s a good feeling. 

Adam raises his glass when Sophia offers a toast, and drains the last inch of his glass.

He stands up and tosses Gansey’s gifted messenger bag over his shoulder. Stepping out for his last econ lecture of the semester, he looks up and breathes deeply to take in the fresh air. It’s a beautiful day, but it doesn’t smell anything like Cabeswater.

* * *

After class, he calls his friends in Virginia to celebrate. His fingers find the keys on his flip phone easily.

“Congrats.” Blue says immediately. “Now welcome to hell with the rest of us who already started finals.”

Adam lets her rant about her upcoming physics final (“required for the major” she moans) and rave about her favorite professor (“a woman in astronomy who also has a great” – Adam questions her definition of ‘great’ – “sense of fashion? I want to be her”) while periodically getting interrupted by the phone ringing or the other inhabitants of 300 Fox Way asking Blue if they have ketchup or powdered conqueror root. 

It’s only then that he realizes: “Is Ronan not with you?” Since Blue’s studying for finals and doesn’t have class, Ronan usually comes wherever she goes to keep her company. With Noah gone, and Adam and Gansey gone, run off to their separate colleges, Monmouth’s been bereft and painfully empty. Ronan and Blue have been thick as thieves, holding down the home front like a pair of horror movie twins. Even Chainsaw, last time Adam saw her, had taken a noticeable liking to Blue.

“No, he’s still at Gansey’s,” Blue says, like it’s obvious. 

It’s not obvious to Adam. “Gansey’s back already?” Last he checked, Brown was still in the middle of finals week too. But maybe he decided to come back to Virginia for the weekend, a casual stop that’s completely feasible for Gansey. 

Sophia and Patrick are similarly heading to Maine “just for brunch” Sunday morning, to visit a sister (another alumna) who just got engaged to some guy whose last name matches half the buildings on campus. Adam can only afford to go home twice a year.

“In Rhode Island, silly,” Blue teases. Her voice loses the light-hearted quality lilt. “Wait, he still hasn’t told you?”

“Told me what?” Now Adam is irritated. He hates being needy but he doesn’t like being left out of the loop.

“Oh, just that he’s been up there this week, staying with Gansey.” No, no one had told him that. Not even Gansey, though they’d spent a good two hours on the phone together Wednesday. Then again, those two hours had consisted solely of Gansey imparting every single detail possible about his latest research paper about organized crime in Providence, so it’s entirely possible he could have meant to. Adam could have begged off the phone call after hearing about legendary Italian boss Raymond Patriarca’s infected toe, before Gansey had a chance to let him know.

“Well, he’s there. Not here. Now I’m forced to hang out with dumb Orla and her dumb nail polish options or be all alone,” Blue complains. Adam hears Orla yell “Hey! Conga Line or Lonesome Dove is a legitimate concern!” from the background, which Blue ignores.

“Oh,” Adam says. He stares out his window. It’s December, but there’s a tree in the courtyard that’s still holding on to some of its desiccated leaves, protected from wind by the stone walls looming around it. Blue _mm-hmm_ s.

Then: “Do you think I should offer to let him come here? I mean, it’s a long drive and he probably should stop along the way somewhere. He’s totally welcome to stay here, of course.” Adam doesn’t understand why it’s costing him so much to make sense. If he could kick himself, he would. “Here’s good as any - I mean, did he even drive?”

Blue just laughs at him, a familiar sound somehow like Christmas bells that Adam misses hearing fill up a room in person. It’s been so long since Adam’s been home. “Yeah, he took the BMW. Adam, if you want to see him, you don’t need another reason. You can totally ask.”

“Right.” Adam finds himself nodding.

“Do you have his number, then?”

* * *

Adam does have Ronan’s number, but doesn’t really remember ever using it before. He talks to Ronan all the time, but never without the context of Blue’s phone. Or Blue. In a way, it’s the first time they’ve been even close to alone together since the summer before freshman year, and everything that had been.

“What.” is how Ronan answers his phone. Adam wonders a little if he’d looked at the caller ID before picking up. He’s never seen Ronan use his own phone, but he imagines it now. He wonders if Ronan would be surprised to Adam’s name come up on the touchscreen on whatever iphone or Samsung he has now, imagines how the angled planes of his face would turn into annoyance or confusion - or maybe even excitement, if they’re going to go through all the options.

Adam takes a little too long to respond. “Hey. It’s me.” 

“Adam.” Ronan doesn’t sound surprised, but he doesn’t sound much of anything. Maybe a little angry, but that’s baseline Ronan anyway. “What do you want?”

“I heard you’re in Providence?” Adam winces at how uncertain he sounds.

“And I heard that you’re a sophomore in college and should probably know not to ask obvious questions. What of it?”

“Um, I don’t know what your plans are, when you were planning on heading back down and stuff-“ Ronan makes a noise of mild impatience that actually sounds kind of like Chainsaw. “But you could stop here if you need a place on the way?” Adam finishes quickly.

“You want me to visit you?” Ronan asks after a heartbeat.

“Do you want to visit me?” Adam counters. It’s a reflex.

The line is quiet for a second. Adam only knows Ronan didn’t hang up on him because he can hear the smoker’s inhale-exhale in the background.

Adam means to say something else, something gracious and/or acceptable and/or kind. He tries to think of what Gansey or Sophia would do: “Yes, Ronan, it’d be great to have you come” or “Our door is always open” or “I miss you” but he doesn’t know what to say, feeling the lack of words like a solid mass of nothing in his throat. He’s eternally grateful when Patrick comes by to put a very large coffee from the shop around the corner on the small tower that is Adam’s political philosophy notes.

“Thanks," he tries to whisper to Patrick, who solemnly salutes his acknowledgement as he walks backwards out the door.

“What?” Ronan asks. “Didn’t hear that.”

“I mean we’re friends, aren’t we?” Adam’s trying to be a good one, but this conversation just makes him uncomfortable. Maybe he shouldn’t have asked at all.

For some reason, he’s half-expecting Ronan to laugh at Adam’s blunder of an invitation the way Blue did. But Ronan doesn’t. 

Finally, he answers, voice coming scratchy over the phone. Adam imagines the waves of sound traveling miles to bring the two of them together in conversation. The two of them, who just a couple of years ago didn’t have phones, and definitely didn’t need their friends to communicate for them. “Yeah, Parrish.” Ronan says. “Yeah we are. I’m leaving today. I’ll text you.” Adam thinks there should be an audible click like a landline when he hangs up, but there isn’t.

* * *

There’s one last problem set to be done before Adam can turn his full attention to papers and exams, so he gathers with his usual study group – Sophia and a handful of people she knows – to try to sprint/marathon through it.

It’s way too many problems, and the professor is cruel to assign it so close to finals. Adam must be more exhausted than he thought, because at one point Sophia puts a hand on his pencil to stop him mid-proof and say “Adam, you’re doing too much work. Instead of writing out the formal definitions, just draw a graph like this, right?”

She’s right, as always. “Maybe try to slow down and work with the group,” she says good-naturedly. Adam looks up and she meets his glance with a smile. 

Two hours pass, during which someone declares they’re taking a short nap, someone else runs to the corner store with a craving for chocolate-covered pretzels, and Adam looks up the driving distance from Providence to his current address about a dozen times at increasingly short intervals (it’s 3 and a half hours max with the worst traffic). Sophia finally declares “Okay, I think we all got it.” Her eyes flick back and forth as she compares the last of their answers. She holds up an okay sign and they all lean back from the table simultaneously to huff a sigh of relief.

“Man, I only need a 46% on the final to get a B+ in this class,” says a junior from Adam’s college with a California drawl. (Adam thinks his father is a congressman from somewhere over there, but he might be getting him mixed up with someone else)

“I need an A,” Adam says resolutely.

“Do you really, man?” Surfer Boy says. Adam knows it’s not malicious, just curious, but he can’t help but to feel criticized, revealing himself too serious again. Here, it’s all overachieving assholes who need to excel because they’re done up too tight with sticks up their backsides, or because they want to sell their souls to Big Law or Wall Street. On the other side, there’s the endless wave of humanities majors who preach constantly about doing what they love – learning for the sake of learning, and art for art’s sake. Having to find a middle ground is something he never foresaw and something he finds hard to navigate now. He knows there are lots of other people who have to deal with the insidious whisper of practicality like him - those whose grades and academic performance means survival, but they’re not always the flashiest or loudest voices on campus. 

Regardless, he has more work to do. 

As Adam walks back from the classroom they’d met in, he detours to first pick up this week’s paycheck, and then drop it off at the university post office.

He digs through his bag to find his phone – it’s hidden somewhere under the jacket he’d shrugged off hours ago, still not used to the unseasonable warmth and expecting freezing temperatures instead.

Pulling up his short list of contacts, he finds the one that says “Parrish landline” and hits call. As it rings, he absent-mindedly grinds a browning golden leaf under his heel. It disintegrates easily. Autumn leaves weren’t supposed to last until December.

“Hello?” his mother’s voice still sounds so foreign over the phone. It’s afternoon, so there was a good chance she was out getting groceries or visiting his father or something, and Adam could leave a message instead. He’d been counting on it.

“Mom, it’s me,” he says. “Just letting you know there’s a check in the mail for you.”

“When will it get here?” his mother asks. Then, as if she’d just remembered. “Thank you, Adam.”

“Of course,” he says. He’d thought about trying to be more genuine, but it comes out flat every time. He’s just not a genuine person.

“How were your classes? Today was your last day, right?” his mother asks tentatively.

“Yeah. They were fine.” Adam racks his brain for some detail he can share. “The last one ended at 10:30 today,” he ends up adding lamely.

“Oh, how terrific,” his mother says. “Which one was that, again?”

It goes like that. Adam knows his mom is trying, trying as hard as he is to make up for the sins of his father. It’s two years and many more too late. But even if he’s forgiven her for everything she did (or didn’t) when he was a kid, he can’t help but to resent her now, taking up precious minutes of his time that he could be using to work on the English paper – the one that’s been fucking him up for weeks. Then, he just feels guiltier than ever. 

“Are you still thinking about studying law-“ his mother ventures. “Or what was it -the economy?”

“Actually, no.” Adam admits. Law or finance – those were the paths what he’d always imagined for himself, tossing back and forth visions of an office on Wall Street or an office with his name on the front. But the closer he got to it, the more he realized he wasn’t cut out for either, no matter how much it killed him to say so. The idea of working for an endless row of privileged clients, each with the same toothpaste commercial smile - the prospect of non-stop networking and elevator conversations - quieted his very soul. “And law isn’t a major.”

“Right,” his mother says. Adam wishes he could say bye right then, to invent some important meeting or other task he must attend to, but he stays on the phone because he’s a coward. “What are you interested in now, then?”

“I’m working on that,” he tells his mother, because it’s true. He’s spent hours poring over the list of offered majors, trying to fit the classes he has taken and the classes he could take next into some unified path that starts from here and ends up a straight shot to a successful life with job stability and a view of the city. Some days he feels like there’s no option for someone like him. Other days he feels like there’s too many options - and their paths are always clouded. It’s overwhelming and nothing like the future he imagined when he was a kid just trying to get into Aglionby. _I’m here. Everything's changed_ , he reminds himself. _I got what I wanted._

“Right. Good luck then, Adam.” Adam can hear his mom growing disinterested and disapproving, and again wishes he had a family like Gansey’s or Blue’s or even Ronan’s, one who knew the happenings in his life and could counsel him, or comfort him, or even insult him. Not one that wasn’t a family at all. It didn’t matter how much he and his mother tried. The longer he stayed away from Henrietta, the more orphaned he became, and there was nothing they could do to stop it.

* * *

As Adam rewrites the same sentence for the fifth time, desperately frustrated at his essay for taking more hours than he expected, he hears the commotion of his suitemates outside his door. He blindly picks at the to-go cup that Patrick brought him in the morning that’s now been refilled at least thrice with dining hall coffee (look, Blue! Adam reuses, reduces, and recycles), but it’s empty. Adam ventures out into the common room to grab some water instead.

Only to find Kevin, Oscar, and a couple of their friends in the dark, cracking up with plastic cups in their hands. Adam can barely see through illumination Sophia’s string of Christmas lights struggles to offer, aided by the few city lights that penetrate their windows. In unison, they raise their cups to greet him, but it takes a few minutes of stomach-clutching and snorting before they call out their real “heys”. Oscar offers Adam a hand, and Adam bro hugs him.

They’re pregaming for something, obviously, and Adam has just missed the big joke.

“Okay, finish up, boys,” a guy with expressive eyebrows from Saybrook says. Adam now recognizes him as Oscar’s boyfriend, who he’s only met twice before - both unfortunate circumstances that involved less pants.

They all drink and then proceed to get up and stack their empty cups on the table until it makes one precarious red tower. Adam frowns and points with his elbow towards the recycling a little. Kevin moves to take care of it, drunkenly embracing Adam on the way. Adam’s surprised Kevin manages to find everything in the near-dark. “We’re just about heading out. Where’s your friend? Isn’t he here yet?”

“No.” Adam says shortly. He’d only told Patrick and Sophia, who are still off somewhere on a date night. The last he’d heard from them, they’d sent a picture that took fifteen minutes for his old phone to open up. Adam recognized the sleek Spanish fusion restaurant next to the art gallery because it’s expensive enough that it only opens for dinner, but he walks past its empty shell all the time in the daylight. He’d thought it was way too late to eat, but Patrick had just remarked with a horridly offensive accent that the French never eat before 8. Adam assumes that last bit was a joke. He still doesn’t understand Patrick’s sense of humor, sometimes.

The guys all put on exaggerated frowns, which turn more ominous in the long shadows of the low light. He’s about to ask them why they haven’t turned on the light, but he’s interrupted.

“We put the non-stinky blanket on the futon and everything,” says some guy Adam actually doesn’t recognize. He does recognize the blanket, though, which is indeed a pristine dove white and usually lives on the chair in Patrick’s single.

“Hey, guys-” Adam starts, actually about to ask them where they’re going. 

“No probs, my friend,” Kevin says, patting Adam’s shoulder with impressive force. “We’ll call you if we need help and all that. Keep your phone on ya.”

“Right.” That’s not what Adam meant. It’s not like he never goes out, and it’s even rude for them to assume that. They leave in a flurry of drunken singing what could potentially be the birthday song, and then it’s quiet and the door’s closed, leaving Adam by himself, alone, in the gaping dim space of the common room.

* * *

At some point, Adam ends up on his back outside in the courtyard. It’s still far too warm for December, but the chill of the ground is cold enough to seep into his body and freeze him there.

He tries to spot the Square of Pegasus like Blue taught him, but the stars are too faint. Even in this sorry excuse for a city, the light pollution’s too much, and he can only look at the patterns of lit windows in faraway buildings instead.

Adam tries to feel inspired, to listen to the busy thrum of the campus and the city around him, but he feels numb. His head flashes, over and over: _finals finalsfinals_. Sometimes it turns into _Ronan?_

Connecticut is nothing like Virginia, but it’s also nothing like Cabeswater. He misses his friends not in the way people do when nostalgia brings pangs to their heart, but with the bitter homesickness of travelers lost at sea that threatens to undermine his focus every day. But he’s here, everything’s changed, and he got what he wanted. _Two more weeks,_ he reminds himself. Maybe not for Noah, but Blue, Gansey, Ronan together again. Monmouth, Cabeswater, and the Barns. When he gets up, he winces. Every single one of his limbs has fallen asleep.

* * *

Adam almost goes to bed, but he stays up to work on his Major English Poets paper instead. 

Well, that’s a lie, and he’s resolved to be more truthful with himself. He stays up to work on his English paper, which is something he absolute needs to do, but also to wait for Ronan.

* * *

A couple dozen minutes past midnight, Adam’s phone lights up. He picks it up, but it’s not the blinking envelope of a text like he was preparing himself to see, but a phone call.

“I’m outside,” Ronan’s voice says very clearly. 

It takes Adam a minute. “What?” He’s been waiting so long, and this was not what he was expecting. 

“What, are you dumb? I’m outside,” Ronan repeats. He rattles off Adam’s address, and Adam wonders at how Ronan knew exactly where to find him. Maybe Adam’s mentioned what residential college he’s in enough times that Ronan remembered. Maybe Ronan asked Gansey. It doesn’t matter now. Either way, he’s here.

Adam makes his way to the cast-iron gate like all his limbs are still asleep. He doesn’t remember the walk down the stairs or to the street, but suddenly, he’s there, and so is Ronan. 

Ronan, a familiar slouched silhouette, threatening but not frightening in the dark. Ronan, whose profile is perfectly delineated under the streetlight, turning his head to look at Adam in one violently graceful movement. 

Ronan, who’s leaning against the rough stone of Adam’s home and talking to Adam’s college friends like he belongs here.

He doesn’t mean to address Sophia first, but he’s too startled. His Henrietta and college worlds are suddenly jarring when put in conjunction. Adam’s always felt like his past life’s in the backseat, but now Ronan’s here calling shotgun. “Sophia, where did you come from?”

“Just got back from Ordinary. Patrick got distracted talking to a friend so I came back alone.” Sophia smiles, naming the bar on College Street. She’s offered to buy Adam a fake ID many times so he can join them, but that’s assuming he can afford the price of mixed drinks in the first place. “I kinda figured this was Ronan here, from all the times you’ve talked about him, so I made an educated guess.”

Has Adam talked about Ronan here? Right now, he can’t remember.

“Nice to see you too, Parrish,” Ronan says sourly. “Your friend’s nice, at least.”

“I know,” Adam says automatically, and then winces. Ronan’s eyes are deep and dark and considering at night. Ronan’s body language, Ronan’s face, Ronan’s eyes were the constant of so many nights in Cabeswater or the Barns. But, if he used how to read them, even in the dark, he has no idea what he’s looking for now. “It’s nice to see you, Ronan.” 

Ronan raises his chin in acknowledgement. It’s a laconic gesture, but one so familiar, the rush of memories almost hurts. He doesn’t remember if he moves first, or Ronan does, but they’re embracing. Adam buries his face in Ronan’s shoulder, and doesn’t understand why he’s on the verge of tears.

When Adam applied for college, he had Gansey to worry about, Aglionby to keep him busy, and the heady scent of rain on nearby mountains.

When Adam got into college, he had Ronan’s head pressed into the crook of his shoulder, Cabeswater leaving offerings of small magic at his door, and the hope that his future was unknown yet increasingly knowable.

Now Adam’s in college, he has a window overlooking a courtyard where a skeleton of a tree sits with two leaves still hanging on for dear life in December, three empty mugs that are cracked and unusable because he keeps accidentally dropping them whenever he get frustrated and the distinct feeling that his father, long may he rot wherever he is, would be laughing at him now.

Everything’s changed, and he has no idea what to do about any of it.

Ronan’s here. Adam thinks about what this means: friendship, a firm, broad frame under the white bruises of his tight fists. The pain of not being home, the scent of pines and honeysuckle, a promise from the past. He has no idea what to do about any of it.

But at least, Ronan’s here, and Adam’s here too. There’s two weeks left before Adam can go home, but it’s a start.


	2. so you were never a saint

Before Adam was so tired all the time, he used to remember his dreams.

Adam’s favorite place in Cabeswater was a particularly quiet little lake they hadn’t found until senior year. It had waited for them, a beacon of placid curves when they’d needed it the most.

Adam finds himself by the lake, more often than not.

Sometimes Cabeswater gets too silent and the shadows of the trees start to bleed into the water. The forests lean in over the lake’s smooth surface until their shade has blocked the reflection of the sky, revealing the water’s true depths. The lake seems to penetrate deep into the Earth. The longer you look, the more colors you see, flora and fauna that only exist in the corner of one’s eye, quick winks that last as long as a compliment.

This is when Adam knows Cabeswater has something to say.

He doesn’t remember what he asks, but Cabeswater answers.

_Te scimus_

Now Adam remembers. (Cabeswater has never been bound by the rules of time, and Adam has always desperate about his future.)

“You know me,” he coaxes. “ _Quid vos videtis?_ What do you see?”

 _Far north where none of us can see you,_ comes the whisper of the trees in response.

A slight rustle passes through the forest. Adam strains to hear what they’re saying: _None of us None of us_

Then comes a shudder of silence. Adam waits, knowing forests don’t count pauses like he does.

_Everything will change _, the trees say in unison.__

The words come soundless, at the same time one and many. Cabeswater doesn’t talk the way humans do, but after all this time, Adam likes to think he can hear its voice. The trees sound fond. A warm breeze touches the back of his neck and, in the water, he glimpses a few fish, sanguine as a blush.

“But do I get what I want?”

Cabeswater is silent for a long time. Adam doesn’t know if this is a dream or a memory. He doesn’t know how it ends, but he often doesn’t, with both dreams and memories. He thinks he remembers a wind beginning to stir the branches of the forest, a movement that means the trees are withdrawing from him. Somewhere past the canopy of the forest, a bird takes off in one brushstroke of a movement. Too big to be a starling. Maybe a raven.

* * *

Adam likes to sleep with the curtains open so he always knows what time it is when he wakes up. When he opens his eyes today, the eastern skyline has a deceptively rosy tinge. But it’s almost winter solstice, so the sun rises late these days.

He fumbles for his phone. It blinks at him: 8:13.

 _Ronan is here_ , comes a tendril of thought. But was it a memory or a dream? The image of Ronan, leaning coolly against the stone walls of Adam’s dorm like an old shadowy painting of a saint is already faded with time.

He walks into the common room. Ronan is there, curled up on the futon, eyes closed against the morning light that peeks in from the windows.

Everything about him stands in sharp relief. It’s as if Adam pulled him out of a memory (or a dream - but Ronan’s the Greywaren, not him). Ronan hasn’t changed at all, the same leather cuffs on his wrist, the same lines of ink curling around the neck of his shirt, the same gentle expression as he sleeps. Adam feels like if he counted every one of Ronan’s eyelashes, outlined softly by the rising sun, they would number the same too.

“I know you’re staring,” Ronan says suddenly, jerking Adam from his thoughts. “Give it up, dumbass, I’m always awake before you.”

Ronan opens his eyes finally, and there they are, staring at each other. With Ronan here, nothing has really changed

“Right,” Adam says, feeling his face flush. “I guess I forgot.”

“Well, don’t.” Ronan’s lips curl into a smirk.

It’s a too familiar smirk. Adam turns away to gesture through the window. “Want me to show you around a little before brunch?” 

Ronan never accepts an invitation without a cutting retort first, and that’s what Adam expects – an insult to his face personally, or just the ivory tower he now calls home, but Ronan simply nods sleepily.

As Ronan gathers his limbs to stand up, something flutters to the ground. He catches it. It’s a feather. A familiar one that glistens slickly in the light.

“I must’ve dreamt it.” Ronan frowns. “That’s weird as fuck.”

“I thought you couldn’t dream things up, this far from the ley line.” Adam watches as Ronan runs his long fingers over the feather, smoothing out its flaws. In Ronan’s careful hands, it looks soft and perfect.

“Yeah, Parrish, that’s why I said it’s fucking weird,” Ronan says.

“My dream was about home, too,” Adam remembers abruptly. “The lake. You here reminds me.”

Ronan folds the feather gently in one fist and stalks over. He moves into the corner where Adam’s standing, and then he’s moving into Adam’s space, the warmth of his body a little shocking in the cold morning light. Adam’s first instinct is to look down, to measure the inches of space between them. It’s not much. He finds his eyes drifting up to meet Ronan’s blue ones, which burn coldly, staring him down. In the back of his mind, Adam realizes his eyelashes are definitely countable now.

Ronan puts a hand on Adam’s right elbow. Adam tries not to flinch but Ronan rolls his eyes anyway. “Move. You’re standing on my shit.”

“Oh, right. Sorry.” Adam steps out of the way as if stepping out of a trance so Ronan can bend to tuck the feather carefully into his bag. Adam knows it’s his way of saying “I miss her.” 

Chainsaw has grown up, no longer the ugly half-formed creature she was when Ronan had first dreamed her, no longer needing to be fed every few hours by a human hand. Now she has her adult feathers, feathers like the one Ronan now has safely put away in his bag. Adam makes a mental note to ask Gansey about it later, but he probably has too many things to worry about other than Cabeswater and its chronic case of weird habits.

Adam doesn’t know what Chainsaw does when she’s not at Ronan’s side. He can’t imagine it at all. Pick at carrion, he guesses. Annoy the other normal ravens. “You’ll be back, soon.” Adam reminds him. “Before she even realizes you’re gone. It’s not like you leave Henrietta that often, anyway.”

“Yeah.” Ronan rolls his eyes. His smile is a little more ironic than his usual sarcasm. Adam is missing something. “You’re right.”

* * *

Adam gives Ronan the full tour, trying to think of what he would like the most, what would impress him. Is it the library, whose inner walls stand solemn as a church cathedral’s? Is it the college buildings, whose ornate wrought-iron gates form a maze only the truly familiar know how to navigate? Is it the clock tower or the well-dressed students or the big hall with its marble rotunda? 

Maybe none of it. Ronan seems unfazed by all the things that had amazed Adam, taking it all in with uncharacteristic calmness. Adam watches Ronan watch everyone else, a dark shadow in black against the bright day. 

It’s anachronistic, Adam decides - a Gansey-ish word Adam had learned for standardized tests that he now knows mean caught out of time. Ronan and college just don’t look like they would ever get along. Ronan looks like he’s sepia and everyone else is black and white; he’s rural and laconic, and everything else moves around him in typical New England bustle like a stream moves around a rock. 

“Where do you usually study?” Ronan asks finally. It’s an easy question but Adam is taken aback. He leads Ronan to the small library he likes most, the one that overlooks the main quad. 

Once they’re there, Ronan runs a hand over the worn leather of a reading chair. Adam takes it all in too, everything feeling so new in Ronan’s presence. When he looks back at Ronan, Ronan’s already watching him, a hint of a smile on his mouth. Heartbeats pass. Ronan says quietly, careful not to disturb the handful of other students studying: “I see why you like it here, Parrish.”

Adam is caught off guard. “Why do you say that?”

Ronan shrugs. “This one’s small,” he says, “but-“ he points out the wide windows to Cross Campus below, where dozens of students are gathered with purpose, talking to each other on benches, carting stacks of books and coffee, and passing through with quick strides. The busy heart of the campus. 

He’d been so busy trying to impress Ronan, but he’d forgotten how well Ronan knows him. He’s pleasantly surprised as he smiles and nods. Ronan got it right. Adam, accustomed to studying alone, has gotten so used to being so far from home in this library. Sharing it with someone else now feels strange. 

That’s when Sophia appears, carrying a bulging bag that thumps resoundingly when she drops it on a nearby table. A nearby studious, freshman-looking girl looks up, startled by the sound. “Thought I’d find you here.” She says, a little out of breath. She waves at Ronan, who raises a sharp eyebrow at her exuberance. “Everyone’s heading to brunch. Coming?”

The red scarf she’s wearing is uneven, about to fall off, but on her it’s charmingly casual instead of sloppy and embarrassing. Adam nods. “Of course. Lead the way.”

* * *

At brunch, Adam and Ronan sit with a group that fills a whole table, and Adam is disappointed in himself. It’s kind of like high school, Adam thinks. But, obviously, also completely different.

Ronan and Sophia are deeply engaged in conversation. From the names and words Adam manages to overhear - Calder, Turrell, Kapoor, and plexiglass and minimalism, Sophia has ensnared Ronan into listening about one of her Great Loves - contemporary art. But Ronan doesn’t look bored or contemptuous. He listens, apparently content.

Adam can’t help but to dare a glance over again. He’s still not used to Ronan’s presence here instead of Henrietta and simultaneously wants Ronan all to himself, but also for Ronan to like Sophia, to see all the new interesting, cultured people he’s meeting.

Adam’s disappointed in himself because he knows he doesn’t have to be anyone’s favorite person, but in the codependent mix that Gansey, Ronan, and Blue are now, he feels out of the loop, having run too far in the other direction. Adam has a specific type of earnestness that’s not coupled with innocence or kindness. He always gets the feeling that other people find it hard to connect. 

He thought he’d at least be Ronan’s favorite person here, on the sheer virtue of everyone else being strangers, but Ronan, for all that he looks like a sharp edge sheathed in leather, disdaining the college experience with every blink, is not having a hard time making friends. It’s a paradox to Adam, how Ronan makes people smile with his vulgarities.

But then, he was the one smiling, once upon a time.

So Adam sits and tries not to obviously stare. He eats far too many pancakes as a result. Adam has promised to be more honest with himself, and there’s way he can pass these syrupy pancakes off as a healthy choice.

He turns away. Patrick is looking at him, considering, over a glass of orange juice. He’d said something, but Adam had missed it. “Bad ear.” Adam reminds him, tapping the left ear in question. Patrick rolls his eyes.

“How long are you staying?” he overhears someone ask behind him, seeming genuinely interested in Ronan’s presence. Adam is jealous of all of them – for having Ronan’s attention, and Ronan, for having theirs so easily too.

Patrick is smirking. “If you’re done being jealous-”

“I’m not,” Adam interjects. Well, okay, he’d just admitted it to himself. But not in the way Patrick is implying. Not like that. Not anymore.

“Then I need your help with what to get Sophia for Christmas.” He whispers conspiratorially through a mouthful of hashbrowns. He and Gansey both have that kind of trick whisper that always makes you feel like you’re about to be entrusted with the most valuable of secrets, no matter how dumb the words are. Adam is drawn in despite himself. “I have some ideas but I need feedback.”

“And you’re asking me?” Adam furrows his brows. Now that he knows it’s not important, his attention wanders away from Patrick’s predicament, back towards Ronan. He doesn’t quite understand just why he’s so jealous. Adam is here, after all. He’s here, everything’s changed, and he got what he wanted. He glances at Ronan just once, and he’s still the same, a cold fire frozen in time, unwilling to leave Matthew and Aurora and the Barns, always unwilling to leave his past behind. 

“Yes?” Patrick shrugs. “I mean, I gotta pull up the site in a sec, but-“

“I mean, why are you asking me?” Adam points to himself with a fork. Sophia is a modest person, but her tastes still run far above Adam’s M.O. Adam would never know what luxury this she would prefer over another luxury that. Patrick and Sophia’s gift exchanges are beyond lavish. They can each afford exactly what the other wants, no Gift of the Magi necessary. Adam is past envying this easiness in a relationship, but it really has nothing to do with him.

Patrick looks at him like he can’t hear him. “Because you’re one of my and Sophia’s best friends?”

Right. There’s that. 

“I mean, if it were jewelry or something, I’d ask her roommate or like Sarah but- shit. She always has the worst timing.” Patrick cuts off as Sophia taps Adam on the shoulder to say something. He sighs, putting down his phone and spearing another sausage instead. “Later, okay?”

As he turns back towards Sophia, he meets Ronan’s eyes over her shoulder. With a narrow-eyed look and an arch of one eyebrow, Ronan manages to communicate an insult like _Your best friend is a girl?_ Adam rolls his eyes and raises an eyebrow in return to say _So is yours_. 

Ronan shrugs, radiating arrogance. _Touché,_ he mouths at Adam.

* * *

It starts to get dark too early. Like everyone else, Adam grumbles to himself about the short winter days, but at least the settling shadows are a reminder of the passing of time. 

He’d been working on his English essay in his room again, wearing more tracks into his outline while Ronan graduated from tossing the dream-raven feather into the air and watching it float down to tossing paper airplanes, probably made out of Adam’s political philosophy notes, across the room. After he’d perfected hitting Adam in the back of the head, Adam had announced he was going to work in the library.

Ronan had shrugged, and started constructing something out of paperclips. Adam, returning to his room now, can’t find Ronan, but does find a miniature Pig made out of paperclips and orange sticky notes sitting on his common room table. Adam wonders how long it took Ronan to make it. 

_Where did you go?_ Adam texts, pulling Ronan’s number out of the recent contacts. At first, finding a Ronan-less room, he’d half-guessed Ronan started the drive back to Virginia while Adam studied and was generally boring, but then he’d realized all of Ronan’s stuff was still here.

Ronan’s reply isn’t immediate, but coming from him, the eternally tardy, ten minutes is pretty prompt. _Art gallery._

“Oscar?” Adam calls, having spied the lights on in his single. He picks up the paperclip Pig as gently as he can. It holds.

“Yeah?” Oscar’s head appears as opens his door. “What’s up?”

“The art gallery is that weird building on York, right?” Adam knows it exists, that some people like Sophia frequent it a lot, but it’s one of those things that’s never made it off the bottom of his to-do-someday list. He just hasn’t had enough time.

“Didn’t you have intro econ there last year? In the auditorium next to it?” Oscar asks.

Oscar’s right, of course. “Thanks,” Adam says. He puts down the miniature Pig. It was surprisingly detailed, up close. Realistic, almost like a dream-Pig about to wheel itself away in search of open roads to race down.

* * *

Adam forgot to include the art gallery on his morning tour with Ronan, though he knows it’s probably important and impressive as anything, so he’s surprised Ronan managed to get there on his own. Maybe Sophia showed him - inspired him with her weird talks about modern art. Adam doesn’t really know what Ronan is interested in anymore, other than dead languages and fast cars.

The university’s gallery is a weird building that’s way bigger than it seems. It’s filled with room after room of different types of art, from an elegantly benevolent sculpture of Athena on the first floor to African masks that remind Adam too much of dream things to a Van Gogh and some weird cubes on the top floor. The cubes are the contemporary art that Sophia likes so much, Adam guesses. 

So after skirting a couple of tourists and what seems like a sea of elementary schoolers sitting cross-legged on the smooth stone floor, Adam is surprised when he finally ends up in the bright, white-walled space of the modern wing, in a room quiet and empty except for one figure.

Ronan is laying on one of the few benches in the gallery. His black shirt is instantly recognizable in the bare room, a dark angry slash echoing the abstract paintings on the far wall.

When Adam nears, Ronan unbends his knees, sits up to make room. The soles of his boots leave traces of dirty footprints that Adam brushes off before settling down next to him. He’s careful to leave some distance. 

As Ronan moves from horizontal to vertical, Adam notices a dark mark on his left torso. A tattoo Adam had never seen before, something more angular than the one on his back, but it’s quickly covered by the hem of a shirt before Adam can make out what it is. Ronan had gotten a tattoo any time in the last year and a half and Adam hadn’t heard a thing about it.

Now he can’t stop looking for it again, waiting for a glimpse. He’d never imagined Ronan getting another tattoo, it’d seemed like the Celtic design on his back was a one-time fit of teenage rebellion: to be treasured but never repeated. But the new one isn’t a repeat. It’s different, something geometric Adam tries to reconstruct in his head. He has no clue what it could be.

“I don’t think you’re supposed to nap in art galleries,” he says.

“Would never,” Ronan scowls. “I was contemplating the art, not that you would know anything about that.”

“Do you?” Adam retorts. He shouldn’t be insulted, because Ronan insults everyone that way, but it stings a little. He was planning on taking an art history class eventually, like everyone told him he should.

Ronan rolls his eyes so hard all Adam can see are whites. “It’s cool. I asked Gloria.” He nods at the employee guarding from the far corner, who waves back. 

“So, what were you contemplating, then?” Adam manages after an awkward silence.

Ronan brings his knees to his chest and looks deliberately at the painting in front of them. Adam looks, too. It’s a big canvas, probably as big up and down the blue doublewide back in Henrietta. A hazy orange rectangle, the obnoxious unnatural color of Orla’s nail polish, hovers over a field of red and another darker hazy rectangle.

“Well,” Adam says. “It’s very… orange?”

Ronan continues to contemplate. He’s not scowling anymore. Instead, his face wears the same soft expression it does when it’s sleeping, an expression Adam hasn’t seen on Ronan awake for a long time. “Do you think some artists were dreamers?” He asks finally.

“Aren’t they all?” Adam frowns. “I mean, the nature of creativity and all that.”

Ronan snorts. “Yeah, I bet you got an A in Vague 101. Is that a required class for you Ivy League types now?” Ronan finally looks away from the painting to meet Adam’s eyes. “I meant, some artists like this one. And dreamers, like me.”

“I don’t know,” Adam admits, wishing he had something better to say. “I guess I don’t get it.”

Ronan kicks him in the shin. “Look closer.”

Adam gets up, moves closer. He can feel the power of Ronan’s glare from here. He feels dumb now, a simple teenager standing in front of a painting he doesn’t understand. In all his desperate reading, his quest to get his hands on everything necessary to become one of the learned elite, he’d forgotten, no, deliberately forsaken the arts. They just hadn’t seemed as important as the Napoleonic Empire and second order derivatives. He feels like a fool now.

“Not close enough,” Ronan says again. Adam moves closer, until all he can see is one color, his field of vision swallowed up by hazy orange. 

It’s not quite that though, the flavorless color of discount supermarket Navel oranges not quite descriptive enough. Some parts of it look like a sunset. Others, persimmons, a fruit Adam only knows from googling when he comes across it in a book, usually about China or Japan or some other exoticized locale he’s never been too.

Adam looks closer and sees the foreign sunset and the bite of juicy persimmon he’s never had. His view travels farther and farther away into pure color, and then he sees the sleek curve of vintage cars, its orange matte finish beckoning him towards home. The Pig, a car he’d worked on so many times he knows its inner mechanics better than his own bones. 

He looks until he sees individual brushstrokes, the layers of paints and the canvas underneath, and knows exactly how the painter got here, to this particular shifting, multi-hued shade of orange: the Pig, and a dress Blue wore once that moved like paper, and bunches of little flowers in Cabeswater, a bonfire they’d made on a beach trip once, reflected through Noah’s very clear eyes, and the way the sunset looked over Ronan’s skin once, once upon a time. 

He turns away abruptly. Ronan smirks, resting his chin on his knees and satisfied as a cat. He leans back precariously on the little space the gallery bench provides him, and in the process, his shirt rides up again, exposing his hip and the pattern there. Adam gets a glimpse of strong black lines before it’s hidden again.

Standing there, his back to the painting, Adam’s now caught between the art and Ronan, who looks like he belongs in this gallery too. “I don’t know if I get it,” Adam says. “But maybe.”

“Close enough, Parrish,” Ronan says, and it sounds kind of like praise.

“Your-“ Adam gestures towards his own left hip, unable to hold back his own curiosity. “Your tattoo, when did you get a new one?”

Ronan’s smirk immediately drops back into a glare. “None of your fucking business.” He snaps, yanking his shirt down. Adam is reminded how quickly day turns into night in the winter, how fickle Ronan’s temper has always been in any season. But it was Adam’s fault. He ruined the moment, said the wrong thing again. “Let’s go. Don’t you have work to do?”

Adam does have work to do. He always does.

* * *

Adam’s is nursing a coffee, still studying at his desk, when Ronan bursts into his bedroom. He brings with him the roar of bass from the common room, previously only a muffled thumping through closed doors. Everyone else seems to have given up on studying today, turning to music and dancing and a good time instead, but Adam can’t afford that.

“I need to do well on these finals,” Adam reminds Ronan, who leans against the door expectantly.

“How could you not?” 

“Easily,” Adam says firmly, turning a new page. The world is waiting for him to slip up once. _So, so easily._

“You’ve never gotten a bad grade in your life,” Ronan scoffs. He walks over, leans over Adam’s shoulder. “A little C won’t kill you. I would know.” 

He can feel the ghost of Ronan’s chin not quite touching Adam’s shoulder. Ronan exhales pointedly into Adam’s ear. Adam feels eyes on his face, but he stares deliberately at his work and tries not to listen for Ronan’s heartbeat. “You almost failed out of Aglionby, Ronan.” Adam reminds him. 

“Yeah, but I didn’t,” Ronan says. “That’s the only thing that matters.”

Ronan finally moves away, hopping up backwards to balance on the edge of Adam’s desk. He starts going through the stuff Adam keeps up there. Not his political philosophy notes, but the little collection of materialism Adam allows himself that lives on his windowsill, watching over the courtyard below. 

“You’re not gonna fail anything, Adam,” Ronan says, running a curious finger over Adam’s transformer and the old Aglionby patch balanced in the branches of a polished jade tree (gift from Sophia). “You could never.”

He’d put up a few things on the window too: a funny printed someecard sent with a care package from Blue (“I miss you more than an idiot misses the point"), a polaroid of Noah taken with a ghost-friendly camera Ronan had dreamed up for that very purpose, and a cliché photostrip that always comes unstuck because of condensation on the glass. He knows Ronan pauses over that one. Adam winces. It was taken in a different time, and it was dumb of him to keep it.

Finally, next to Persephone’s tarot cards, there’s the paper clip Pig. Ronan picks it up idly, then replaces it carefully.

“Sorry, I didn’t realize I put it here,” Adam says, embarrassed.

“Keep it. I can always make another.” Ronan gently touches the picture of Noah, crossing his eyes and sticking out his tongue for the camera.

They both sit in careful silence for a few minutes, remembering the shared loss together. No words are necessary; they both remember how alive Noah was, so many years after his death.

“College is hard,” Adam says finally. “Shit, I think I’m losing my mind.”

Ronan grins shark-like as Adam officially gives up on being productive and slumps back. “I can help you find it.” He says. Ronan is leaning against Adam’s desk, probably trying to be provocative, one long unbroken line in low slung jeans and a muscle tee.

Adam rolls his eyes. “Thanks for the offer.”

“Seriou,.” Ronan says. He leans in, trying for earnestness. It works a little.

“You really can’t help me now, Ronan.” Even so, Adam smiles. He stares at the line of Ronan’s mouth, Ronan’s lips quirking into a slight smile in return.

“But I know exactly what special Parrish brand of crazy to look for.” Adam rolls his eyes good-naturedly. He watches, one hand on chin, as Ronan picks up a plastic cup Adam hadn’t noticed. Adam is unable to stop himself from watching the sinuous curve of Ronan’s throat as he downs whatever was in it.

Adam narrows his eyes. Now that he’s paying attention, he recognizes the all-too-familiar smell of whiskey. “Should you really be drinking?” Adam teases.

That was obviously not the right memory to be bringing into play here, but Adam realizes too late. Ronan drops the cup, meeting Adam’s gaze. It clatters to the ground hollow and empty. His eyes are incredulous, fire burning cold. “Are you fucking kidding me, Parrish?” 

Adam is so, so stupid. He brought up the past, ruined the moment, said the wrong thing again (and again and again).

He knows Ronan’s waiting for him to say something else, but he can’t. 

The past should stay the past, he thinks, watching Ronan stalk out the door.

* * *

Adam thinks it’s safe when the music disappears, cutting off Justin Bieber mid-apology. He gives it a minute and then opens his door.

The music is still there, just quieter. So is Sophia. Cigarette in one hand, she fiddles with Spotify with the other. She puts on a milder track Adam recognizes, the guitar and drums twining around the vocals and settling lowly through the room into a cool smooth harmony Adam associates with Sophia herself. No wonder she likes this band so much.

“Open the window, at least,” Adam says. Smoking is a bad habit Sophia blames on not being American. Whether she picked it up from years lived in London, Hong Kong, Shanghai or Amsterdam, Adam doesn’t know. Probably all of the above.

“Sorry, I thought everyone left. Want one?”

“Nah.” Sophia always asks. She would never do anything to leave anyone out.

Sophia shrugs, exhaling a stream of smoke to the left, angled away from Adam. She looks glamorous, modern and old Hollywood at the same time. The smoke stretches and fades into the room. Adam wrinkles his nose at the stench. Such an ugly habit shouldn’t be so beautiful. 

“Not an excuse for not opening the window.” Adam reminds her.

Sophia rolls her eyes. “What happened to your boy?” she says, leaning over to undo the catch.

“Not my boy.” 

“Are you sure?” The window is finally thrown open, letting in a rush of cool air.

Adam snorts. “Yeah, I am now.” He sighs, leaning gingerly on the windowsill to breathe in the fresh air. As usual, he’s disappointed when it’s just the sound of passerbys and the faint scent of traffic, nothing like Cabeswater. “You’re so nice to him. You’re always so nice to everyone. But I try and I always fuck it up.”

“Trust me, I’m not nice to everyone. That’s just what you think, because I’m always nice to you.” She nudges him out of the way to exhale another plume of smoke out the window. “Sure you don’t want one?”

“Bad habit, Sophia.”

“I’m nice to Ronan because he’s, well, he’s important to you.” Sophia rests her head on Adam’s shoulder.

“He’s my friend,” Adam allows, because it’s the truth.

“I’m your friend. Ronan’s something else.” Yes, Sophia is probably the best friend Adam has here at college, and Adam’s only realized it this weekend. That makes him uncomfortable. He owes Sophia so much more than that. Sophia and Patrick and Oscar and all the other people who have gotten to know him and are surprisingly now his friends.

“We’re just friends. We’ve always been friends.” Sophia gives him a look. She opens her mouth to say something. Adam can guess: “Just like me and Patrick are friends” or “I’m not stupid” or straight up “That’s a lie.” Ronan is the one that doesn’t lie. Adam – Adam has never been so comfortable with the truth. He feels a deep shame sink into him, remembering that day after classes helping Ronan cram calculus that turned into the gentlest evening Adam had ever experienced, his first kiss, what his Henrietta accent feels like, what it felt like to keep secrets from everyone.

He remembers the end, folding over him like a wave, remembers Ronan’s possessive disapproval, his father’s contempt, alcohol on breath, what his Henrietta accent feels like, the light of college far north drawing him ever closer until he couldn’t do anything but break into a run to chase it. Now it’s too late. He and Ronan aren’t like that anymore.

“Let me try that,” Adam says, cutting off whatever Sophia was about to say. He doesn’t know any other way to run away. 

Sophia raises one elegant eyebrow, but indulges him. They both watch him inhale, the lit end of the cigarette flaring up in response. He still immediately coughs at the heaviness of the smoke, though he’s tried it before. He hands the cigarette back to Sophia as he wheezes unattractively.

“That’s disgusting. I don’t get how you do it,” Adam says. Sophia shrugs amusedly as she puts the cigarette back between her lips.

“You wouldn’t.” Sophia takes one last inhale. “Adam, you don’t have any bad habits.” There’s not much left. Sophia leans out the window to put it out against the stone wall beneath them and then shuts it behind her. The room is instantly warmer. The song ends, turns into another. It’s playing the album in order. 

“I can think of one,” Adam says.

* * *

Adam follows Sophia to the party. Someone they all know is studying abroad next semester, so her friends are throwing a party to remind her where and who to come back to.

When he gets there, he spies two familiar faces in the corner. Adam always spots Ronan first in any crowd, but now that feels like a curse. Ronan must see him too, because their eyes meet. Adam looks away, but not before he sees Ronan’s lip start to curl, and that the other face is Leila, nothing less than a scene from Adam’s worst nightmare. In his 19 years of life, he’s fucked up on a lot of people, but Adam is pretty sure he’s only disappointed two people so thoroughly when they did nothing wrong. 

A hand touches his arm gently. It’s Sophia, pulling him into a different crowd, which readily parts to let them in. Let’s dance, says Sophia’s grin as she passes him off to another friend. The beat changes and everyone laughs: it’s a dance remix of the Murder Squash song.

Adam tries his best, starting to feel the shots they’d downed on the way out filter into his body. He always finds it hard to let go completely, so he’s not the best of dancers, but the heavy bass of dance music pounding even through his deaf ear is the closest thing to adrenaline and the wilds of Cabeswater he can find in this new era of his life. Other people’s enthusiasm has always been infectious to him, more than any shots ever could, and he wishes Blue and Gansey were here, that he could just get through finals and get back to them.

Adam dances with a lot of people, finding a smile on his face despite himself because he’d forgotten he had this many friends here. He spies Patrick weaving between people, quick as a fish, darting in to pull a silly dance move with Adam, and back to put his hands in Sophia’s, who grins up at him. Her shoulders naturally shift to fall in line with his. They look so happy, a carefree matched pair.

Sophia tries to spin Patrick, but her arms are just a little too short, trapping them both into a tangle of limbs that almost earns Adam an elbow in the face, but he moves out of the way, just in time.

Only to find himself maneuvered against a wall next to Ronan. _Oh_ , Adam thinks, catching Ronan’s gaze from the side. He looks a bit like a Greek statue in profile, but his eyes are glinting, too alive.

“Hey,” Ronan says. 

“Hey,” Adam says.

“Your friends are kinda dumb,” Ronan says, with a sharp kind of amusement. They watch Patrick and Sophia untangle themselves, not yet ready to look at each other.

“You’re my friend,” Adam reminds him. Ronan could only ever be insulting himself.

Ronan raises an eyebrow, but it’s good-natured.

“I didn’t mean to-“Adam ventures, hoping Ronan’s good mood will hold. “Earlier. I mean, I know that’s not you.”

Ronan cocks his head like Chainsaw, looking far too comfortable slouched against this wall. “What do you know about me, Adam Parrish?” His words drip lazy like honey.

“I mean, I knew you, once,” Adam says.

There’s a heartbeat where Ronan just stays there, considering him. But then it passes, and Ronan is peeling himself off the wall. “Come on, let’s dance.” He says, beckoning Adam into the crowd with an arrogant raise of his chin.

* * *

Adam’s almost forgotten how viscerally Ronan feels music, even if his preferences are usually more Irish and/or violent than what’s currently blasting through the room. Sometimes Ronan closes his eyes, grins when there’s a beat he particularly likes. It’s the kind of pure enjoyment that infuses every motion of his body, falls gracefully down the line of his spine, his hips like rain. The shadows of his face and his skin make him seem an earthly incarnation of some god of old, a vision of war made flesh, or thunder, or desire, and Adam is-

Adam is too afraid to touch Ronan, and that’s probably not even what he’s supposed to do, so he keeps his distance.

But Ronan comes to him, inching closer with every song, the rise and fall of an incoming tide. His proximity pulls Adam into the music, into him, until they’re so close Ronan is speaking into his ear.

It takes Adam a second to listen properly, to pull his mind out from where it’d been lost in the moment. “So that girl,” Ronan is saying into his good ear, and Adam knows who he’s referring to.

“Leila.”

“Leila, yeah. She wasn’t so happy to hear who I was here visiting.” Adam is a little terrified of where this is going, but Ronan has got them on the edge of the crowd, and he can’t do anything except be here, be honest with Ronan and with himself.

“She hates me,” Adam says flatly. “You know how it is. Messy breakups.”

Ronan makes a face, a flash of darkness illuminating his face. They’re not even trying to dance anymore. “No, I don’t think I do.”

Adam thinks of Leila, of the few other girls and boys he’s pulled from shitty parties and coffee-shop dates, to be kissed and touched and sucked off and dropped off. After the disaster of Leila so early into his first semester, screaming at him about how little he cared (how much Adam had wanted to desperately yell back that he agreed, that he knew it must hurt to love someone who wasn’t ready to be loved, but staying quiet because it was better to just have her think he was an asshole), Adam knew he didn’t want someone to remind him he’d sacrificed too much. “Come on, there has to be something.” Adam tries. “I mean, other than, you know.”

“Other than you?” Ronan’s face is an echo of smile, his gaze direct. Adam’s eyes flickers down for a second, forced away by Ronan’s blunt self-violence. “Once. It was a mistake.” Ronan is the one to avert his eyes then, looking down through dark lashes and a quirk of full lips. Adam studies the careful curve of his cheekbones, the vulnerable expanse of his throat, and thinks he might be blushing. It’s as good of an admission as anything. 

It hurts to look at him and have his heart hope for a maybe when his head knows it’s a no.

In the background, people are laughing, the music is a steady torrent of keys and bass. Adam lets it wash over him, thinking about what he’s done to get here. _I’m here_ , he reminds himself. _Everything’s changed._ But that’s not all, is it. Ronan’s here too. They could do anything, in this corner, and no one would notice. It’s a shadow of being in their own world.

Adam telegraphs his movements, careful as the first time, reaching out for Ronan like he’s trying to wrap his hand around a flame. Ronan lets him, watching with an unreadable expression. The tips of his fingers meet the soft give of fabric of Ronan’s shirt; his palm feels the hard line of Ronan’s hip underneath.

Adam is touching Ronan, feeling the slow blaze of his body through his shirt, the smoothness of his skin behind his ear, sliding fingers through the short hair at the back of his neck, and can’t breathe for it. They’re so close. 

Adam moves closer, but Ronan turns his head at the last moment, leaving Adam with nothing. 

“That wasn’t fucking permission, Parrish,” Ronan snarls. His eyes are cold. Adam’s hand is still on his hip. He drops it before Ronan can twist out of that too, and his hands feel startlingly empty.

Adam is paralyzed, terrified of saying something stupid. “I thought.” But he stops. He didn’t think. He should’ve listened to his instincts, mind over matter, but he could never control himself when Ronan was around. Ronan’s presence is fire and no matter how many times he’s been burned, Adam can’t stop reaching out to feel the warmth.

“You already know I can’t-” Ronan shakes his head. “I don’t want your pity.”

“I didn’t mean-“Adam tries again. 

“Leila didn’t know who I was,” Ronan says. “She introduced herself to me as your first girlfriend, though. She said” – and he puts on a mocking tone, dragging out each syllable like a brand- “’I’m sure he’s told you his side of the story.’”

“She was my first girlfriend,” Adam manages to point out. He and Blue had decided, ages ago, that whatever something they had was nothing more than that: something.

“Fuck your details. That’s not what you meant and you know it.” Ronan’s eyes are a knife. “I shouldn’t have come here. God, you haven’t changed at all.”

“I don’t understand,” Adam says. What did Ronan mean, he hasn’t changed at all? Everything’s different now, Adam, and Ronan, and Adam and Ronan. It’s only Adam’s fault, his bad habit of not being honest with himself fucking it up for everyone again. Ronan never seemed to have that problem. 

But he should’ve known better.

Everything’s different now, yet it’s not quite what he thought. He isn’t who he thought he would be, making plans while lying in his shitty St. Agnes apartment years ago. He had so many of them, always turning visions of his future life over in his head for hours at a time, as long as he could before he had to get up and crawl back to his shitty family, his shitty job. 

This is not what he imagined for himself, still stuck on Ronan Lynch, making himself a fool for Ronan, disappointing Ronan and fucking it all up. Again. He’d suffered from the crime of running for his life, but it turns out he ran too hard, too far, and it’s too late to catch his breath now.

Ronan is still close enough to hear, but he feels a million miles away. “What do you want from me, Adam?”

Adam shakes his head, without words. 

“So Adam Parrish doesn’t know what he wants,” Ronan says. The edges of his lips curl up into what is either a smile or a grimace and Adam hates the insecurity that’s freezing him here. “It’s okay. Even if you don’t forgive you, I do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I do not condone either smoking or looking for a deeper meaning in Rothkos, which are very bad for you, but make good plot devices.


	3. the art of good choices

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello, I accidentally deleted this chapter right after I posted. But it's back.

It’s after midnight, and it should be a new day.

Reality comes crashing down as Adam is on his back, baring his vulnerabilities to the stars. He’s trying to find the Square of Pegasus again, but the tiredness of an entire semester is starting to set in. It settles in the edges of his vision and threatens to bury him here in this courtyard. It’s been a while since Adam had time to just sit and think about his life, too busy moving, fast and efficient, down the steps he’d planned for himself. But maybe ages ago, he’d veered off the path a little. Now it’s been so long, that little misstep’s left him miles away from where he should be. It had always been so, so easy to fuck up and lose it all.

For the first time in years, his ears itch for Cabeswater, his hands itch for tarot cards, looking for someone else to tell him what to do. 

When Adam really thinks about it, this feels more like the tiredness of a lifetime. Maybe this is the first time since Noah disappeared for good that he’s taken time to catch his breath, and even then, they only had a minute in between fighting for their lives, and for each other’s. 

New Haven, Connecticut is the haven you make of it.

* * *

Patrick was hanging out with him earlier (“You stormed out of there pretty quick”), but Adam had asked to be alone. One last “Are you going to be okay?”, and then he was gone.

Adam had told him everything. “I think I once told him he was just jealous of me because he doesn’t know what he wants,” Adam had remembered, hating himself for every word pulled out from the very back of his mind.

Patrick had just sat there patiently, waiting, as had the stars and the rest of the world.

Adam says, even more slowly, letting his vowels drag the way they want, “I told him that he wanted me to stay in Henrietta with him to make himself feel better because he’s not going to college and he doesn’t have any ambition other than drinking.” 

Adam pauses, distracting himself with the rhythm of his own heartbeat, because he’s left the worst for last. Patrick was still there, quiet, not judging. What had Adam done to deserve such good friends, both back in Virginia and here?

“I might have said he was as bad as my dad.” 

Adam didn’t even believe it, then. Not any of it. Ronan always wanted the best for him, wanted him to be here. But Adam had said so many things and hurt so many people because he was afraid.

Adam covers his eyes with his hands, wishing he could go back in time and change everything. But even when he still had Cabeswater’s magic, carefully listening to Blue insist again and again that ‘time is a circle’, he didn’t have that power.

College was a riptide. It turns out Ronan’s presence was a force of nature that could part oceans. Adam thought he’d get here and stop feeling the same way about Ronan, that there was no way they could continue.

But, after all this time, he is still in love with Ronan Lynch.

“I am so, so stupid,” he says. 

“You said it, not me.” Patrick says, moving closer to Adam so he could pat his shoulder. Adam leans his head against Patrick’s knee.

“Hey,” Adam says without much force.

“But it’s true,” Patrick says, “and I think maybe I’m not the person you need to be saying it to.” But it’s too late. He’d fucked up the one chance he’d needed the most, and then, somehow managed to pull a friendship out of thin air – a friendship he didn’t deserve - and fuck that up too.

* * *

“Get up,” a voice says. Someone sticks a foot in his side. It takes Adam too long to register who, though he recognizes the voice. He reaches desperately for the memory, but it’s like trying to breathe underwater. “These self-destructive behaviors are mine, remember. You can’t have them.” 

“God, Ronan.” Adam slings an arm over his eyes.

“I’m only here because it’s important,” Ronan’s voice says authoritatively.

Adam sighs, but doesn’t remove his arm. “What?”

“I don’t know if you noticed, but you’ve got a friend here who should be 300 miles away,” says Ronan, “and Blue swears she just saw her ten minutes ago before she disappeared into thin air.”

Adam finally looks up at Ronan, bewildered. Ronan stands there, arms crossed, but otherwise the same as he was an hour ago. He jerks his head to the left. Adam follows the motion, and is surprised at what he sees.

“Chainsaw?” To Adam it could be any raven - any big black bird, honestly, but he trusts Ronan. And there is something familiar about the set of her beak. There she is, dropping something glistening at Adam’s feet.

It’s a flower, still glistening with dew. He looks at Ronan. “It sure as hell wasn’t me,” Ronan says with a defensive scowl. 

Adam shakes his head. He hasn’t been able to do any real magic for two years now, ever since Cabeswater relinquished their contract.

Ronan rolls his eyes, exasperated, and then holds his arm out for Chainsaw, who flaps up to perch obligingly. “God, and you went to Adam first instead of me. You fucking piece of shit, I should just drown you in the ocean.”

“I know,” Adam says, about to joke that they’re really pretty close to the shore.

Ronan looks at him like he’s crazy. 

“I mean, I know you missed her,” Adam adds awkwardly, remembering the feather Ronan had dreamed this morning. Come to think of it, there’d been a raven in his dream too, hadn’t there?

“How did this happen?” Ronan asks. Chainsaw’s on his shoulder now, and he’s using his free hand to stroke her dark feathers. They are two shadows, blending into each other and into the night. “Can you get her back?”

“I think it’s us,” Adam realizes.

Ronan glares at him, eyes implying just how stupid he thinks Adam is. “This has never happened before.”

“That was before,” Adam says. “We’re different now. We’re older.”

“Fuck Cabeswater,” Ronan declares. “We already gave it everything it wanted.”

“I don’t think it’s just Cabeswater.” Adam meets Ronan’s eyes for the first time. This is more than just them. He thinks of all the things they’ve done together, with Gansey and Noah and Blue too. He thinks of all the things they could do together in the future. Even though he doesn’t have Cabeswater anymore, he can still remember the way magic feels, echoing in his bones, and knows things like that don’t fade completely. They leave memories. They leave scars. “It looks like magic isn’t done with us yet.”

Ronan sits down next to him, careful not to unseat Chainsaw. It’s a small concession. Above them, someone turns out a light and another window goes dark. It feels a little warmer, with Ronan’s body heat shielding Adam’s from the breeze.

“Look,” Adam points. “The Square of Pegasus.”  
“And Andromeda next to it.” Ronan looks up too, his neck craned up in one sharp angle in the corner of Adam’s vision. “I know. Blue taught me.”

“I’ve been looking for it for a while,” Adam admits. “But I guess it’s bigger than I remember, the first time Blue showed me, so I missed it.” And so it is, the big square of Pegasus’s winged body and the other stars that make up its limbs, curving across the sky and dwarfing the all the other constellations. Andromeda waits nearby, chained to a rock as she watches Perseus approach to slay the sea monster Cetus threatening her other side.

Ronan scowls. “If it bothers you so much, just look it up.”

“I told Patrick,” Adam says abruptly.

“Told him what?” Ronan asks flatly. He brings his knees up to his chest, looking like a caged animal. Chainsaw ruffles her feathers from his shoulder, hunching threateningly.

“About, you know, us.”

“He didn’t know before?”  
It’s Adam’s turn to snort. “You couldn’t have been expecting much from me.”

Ronan is quiet for a second. “So?”

“I said I was the biggest idiot to ever grace this earth.” Adam looks at Ronan, wishing he would meet his eyes. “He agreed.”

“Understatement.” Ronan kicks Adam in the arm then, and he knows Ronan understood that Adam’s trying to apologize.

“I understand now,” Adam says. Ronan doesn’t reply, but Adam barrels on, praying for someone to give him the bravery to see this through. “Ask me again. Earlier, when I tried to kiss you. I know- I know you don’t do this. But it wasn’t pity.” 

“I don’t need your respect either.”

“I know.” Adam’s the one who’s always been hung up on that. “But you don’t know how much you mean to me.”

“Don’t I?” Ronan’s glance is dismissive.

“ _I_ didn’t know how much you mean to me,” Adam corrects himself. The admission surprises him, even though he’s the one who asked for bravery. “I know what I want now,” Adam says. “It’s still you.”

He picks up the still perfectly dew-wet flower, but leaves Ronan with Chainsaw, who’s picking at an overturned plastic cup two feet from his left knee. Somebody should stop her really, alcohol can’t be best for birds.

But even now, dirty and surrounded by trash, she’s the first magical thing Adam’s ever seen in Connecticut. He bets it won’t be the last.

* * *

When Adam gets back to his dorm, he takes a shower, because he’s cold and covered in grass. By the time he turns off the water, he feels much more like himself, no longer smelling of beer and dirt. He feels like himself, maybe for the first time in months.

When he gets back to his room, Ronan is there.

Adam looks away, blushing because he’s in a fucking towel, but when he looks back, Ronan is there.

Ronan sits on the edge of his desk, swinging his legs aggressively, but otherwise his hands are in his lap and he’s waiting patiently. It doesn’t look like a very Ronan posture, but then he did sit through Latin and Church all the time. 

“Lynch,” Adam says. It’s a question.

“So, um thanks,” Ronan says quietly. Maybe Ronan mellowed out in the last couple of years while Adam wasn’t looking. But then maybe mellow isn’t the right word. His hair’s a little longer but his jawline’s sharper. And there’s that new tattoo Adam still can’t identify. 

“For what?” Adam stands there awkwardly, hands tight in the towel around his waist.

“Chainsaw,” Ronan says simply.

“Oh, um,” Adam says, “I still don’t think that was me.”

“You’re the one that said it. ‘It looks like magic isn’t done with us yet.’” Ronan’s mouth quirks with a hint of a smile. “I left her outside. I think, I think she was trying to fly back to Henrietta.”

“Can she do that?”

“She’s magic, the rules of the world don’t apply to her.” Ronan shrugs, then looks down at his hands, fidgeting with the leather on his wrists. The bands are different than the ones he wore in high school, and splattered with something that Adam originally assumed was age and wear but, on a closer look, might be ink or paint or both. “I could go too, try to actually make church in the morning.”

“Don’t,” Adam says.

“No?” 

“There’s evening service, isn’t there?” Adam remembers what the busy hum of prayer had sounded like from his apartment. “Matthew and Declan and your mom won’t be there, but there’ll still be priests and wine and stuff.” 

Ronan smiles for real now; it lights up his face unexpectedly. “Talk Catholic to me, Parrish.”

Adam rolls his eyes. “Hey, I try.”

Ronan slides off the desk. Their eyes meet for a second. A second becomes a minute. Ronan’s eyes drift downward for a heartbeat, and Adam is aware of every inhale of breath in his chest and stomach, the slow drip of water down his body. He feels his cheeks burning. He’s still in a fucking towel.

(It’s nothing Ronan hasn’t seen before. The memory makes Adam blush even more.)

They’re staring at each other. Ronan walks over deliberately, crossing the little space there is in Adam’s single. He’s standing in front of him, then taking one step more. They’re already too close to be anything platonically acceptable. Adam takes a step back unconsciously, but Ronan cages Adam in, backs him up against the wall, and Adam can see every one of his eyelashes, a different black stroke against the angles of his face.

“Don’t you have the guts to kiss me now?” Ronan sneers. 

Adam keeps looking at Ronan, the angry line of his eyebrows shadowing his eyes, the angry line of his mouth shadowing his face. He sees the exact moment when fight turns to flight: Ronan backs away a little, but Adam reaches out first. 

Adam touches the edge of Ronan’s mouth softly, feeling where his lips turn into skin. Ronan’s expression changes under his touch, hostility turning into something else, something like desire. When Ronan exhales, Adam can feel it on his palm. Ronan looks away, and the movement of his eyes under the lashes is beautiful.

Adam’s hand moves to cup Ronan’s jaw, while the other moves to his hip. 

(They’ve been here before.)

“I want to make it up to you,” Adam says.

He kisses him then, a soft press of lips on the hollow of Ronan’s cheekbones. Ronan shivers a little; this is not what he was expecting.

When he moves away, Ronan is just exhaling onto Adam’s skin, a soft breath that’s too gentle. “You know I could never say no to you,” Ronan says. But then, Ronan’s hands find his waist. He brings one up so his fingers can run through Adam’s still-wet hair and his mouth catches Adam’s. At first it’s slow, close-mouthed in a way that makes Adam light-headed with anticipation. This is their first kiss in over a year.

“What do you want?” Adam asks. 

“You.” Ronan’s blue eyes are defiant, all pupil. Ronan’s mouth opens his, wet and taking, Ronan’s hands are on his, moving them to undo the tuck of his towel.

Suddenly, Adam is bare, and if he thought they were standing close before, Ronan presses his body against Adam’s so tightly he can feel every angle of his body, every button and seam of his clothing. It suddenly seems overwhelming, even as Ronan’s hands and mouth move over his skin, searing hot and smooth and making him forget what cold ever was.

Hands move up the nape of his neck, then down, over the small of his back, his stomach, lingering there, but not any farther. Adam shivers, paralyzed, pressing his hips into Ronan’s. He buries a moan in Ronan’s collarbone. The fabric of Ronan’s clothes is suddenly too much, too rough, and Adam longs for the softness of skin. Ronan smirks as he licks up Adam’s neck. “Whatcha gonna do about it, Parrish?”

This isn’t Cabeswater. This isn’t the Barns. This isn’t Adam’s shitty St. Agnes apartment or Ronan’s dusty dark corner of Monmouth. This is something new, a tiny little dorm room that dozens of have lived in before, leaving their marks in the worn tracks in the hardwood floors. It’s a state that gets colder in winter; it’s the middle of a Saturday night, the beginning of a Sunday morning. New Haven is the haven you make of it. He reaches back to lock the door.

“Everything,” Adam says. “I’m going to make everything up to you.” He gets on his knees. Ronan shudders. It’s a minute movement, almost nothing, but Adam is watching too close to miss it. “I’m going to show you just how much I worship you.”

At first, Ronan is still as a stone, unmoved as Adam runs a light hand over his thighs. He slows his movements, trying to get Ronan to shiver again, brushing a palm over the inside of his thighs, feeling the seam of his jeans, careful not to touch too hard, too fast - to take his time. But then he brings his hands up, makes quick work of the zipper of Ronan’s pants, and they are that much closer.

Adam puts his mouth high on Ronan’s left thigh, letting it linger. “Our Father, who art in Heaven,” he murmurs, trying to remember what he knows of the prayer from the few times Ronan’s showed him. Ronan is breathing harder now. “Hallowed be Thy name-”

“Come on, Parrish.” Ronan works a hand through Adam’s hair, grasping at the back of his head. But he’s laughing. Adam can feel it under his hands and lips. 

“You’re the one who said ‘talk Catholic to me,’” Adam reminds him. He resumes his ministrations, slipping two fingers under the waistband of Ronan’s boxers, just above his hip. “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done -”

“Stop,” Ronan shoves at him a little, pulling Adam’s hair so he has to look up at him. Ronan is almost giggling now, silent laughter reverberating through his entire body. This is a Ronan not everyone gets to see.

“Make me.” Adam pulls Ronan’s boxers down the rest of the way. “Shut me up.”

“Fuck.” Ronan says. And he does just that.

And this is what Adam remembers:

The rough shudder of his hips into Ronan’s, pressing his face in Ronan’s neck to remember what it tastes like, his hands first on Ronan’s hips to force them still. And then his hands, shaking over the elastic of a condom, then his fingers in Ronan’s mouth. 

And then later, once the wet of Adam’s hair had dried, the water absolving them of any previous sin, there’s Ronan’s mouth, rough and red against his skin, Ronan’s thighs tight around the bones of his hips, Ronan’s tattoos under his tongue. And Adam - Adam trying desperately to remember this isn’t the Barns, this isn’t Cabeswater or Adam’s shitty St. Agnes apartment, pressing Ronan into the sheets so he doesn’t break the frame of his shitty college Twin XL, doesn’t wake the whole building up with his curses.

But Adam would be alright if the building came down around them.

Because after all this time, they are here.

* * *

When Adam first opens his eyes again, the room is dim and rosy with early dawn. He unsticks his cheek from Ronan’s chest, untangles his fingers from Ronan’s to rub the sleep out of his eyes.

Ronan is on the phone. “Sh, I’m just calling Matthew to let him know I’m not going to be at mass.” He grabs Adam’s hand, re-tangles their fingers. “Sorry if I woke you.” 

As Adam waits, listening to how gentle Ronan’s voice is as he speaks to Matthew, he takes the time to run his fingers over Ronan’s left hip, to really study the tattoo there.

At first, it’s a mess of thin, pencil-like lines Adam can’t make any sense of, but he blinks and pulls back a bit and the familiar lines of the Barns looks back at him. Here is the line of the roof and the chimney. Here is the line of the mountain behind it. Here is the slope of a cow’s back, Chainsaw’s wing. The edge is the whimsical shapes of a key that could only ever fit in a magical lock - alock like the one on the door to Ronan’s home. 

It’s not really so different from what Adam expected, after all. It was just the angles that threw him off, the thin sketchiness reminding him of Picasso or some other artist whose work he’s seen before but never got familiar with enough to name.

Adam tries to untangle himself from Ronan again, but Ronan is stronger than he is and he uses all that strength to hold Adam there. There’s not much room to maneuver on this twin bed. Ronan’s free hand holds tight, unwilling to let go while he glares at him from around the phone in his other hand. _Cut it out_ , Ronan mouths.

“Sorry, I just have to pee,” Adam laughs, stroking his thumb over Ronan’s. He finally escapes, albeit reluctantly, and with a press of lips to Ronan’s eyebrow.

* * *

Adam comes back from the bathroom and is a little struck at the quiet of the morning light in the common room. It’s empty and silent, too early for anyone else to be awake when no one has classes to go to. This early, everything seems a little less shiny, a little less bright, leaving a world that’s still and tangible in its place. Like the lake in Cabeswater on one of those best days. Everything at once hazy like a dream and somehow more realistic than daylight.

A door swings open, and Patrick backs out, keys in one hand, coat in the other, and a bagel in his mouth. Adam remembers his and Sophia’s plans for brunch in Maine with her sister and fiancé - the future in-laws, maybe. Patrick removes the bagel from his mouth. “Oh, hey, bro,” he says, gaze lingering on Adam’s state of undress. Adam blushes, knowing without looking that he must have telling bruises. “I’m gonna assume everything turned out okay.”

“Did you ever figure out what to get Sophia for Christmas?” Adam asks, knowing Sophia is a surefire way to distract him.

Patrick instantly leans back and groans dramatically. “No. I was _going_ to take her to New York to see the new Picasso Sculpture exhibition at the MOMA, and then dinner, but she just mentioned talking about it with her sister, and they’re going to see it together.”

“Why don’t you all three go?”

“Adam Parrish, how romantic,” Patrick says dryly. Then he gives him a sly look. “Three can be fun, but not when one of them is related to your S.O.”

“Too much information,” Adam winces. He’d only walked in on Patrick and Sophia once, and it had been just as bad as the one time he’d walked in on Blue and Gansey. 

Patrick laughs. “Don’t worry, we’ve never actually tried that. Neither of us can be as bi as you. It’s no fun.”

“Sucks to be you,” Adam says simply.

“So yeah, now I’m thinking we can go to a show or something, but maybe I should get her something too.” Patrick scrunches up his face, lost in thought. It’s the same face that Gansey always makes.

Adam shrugs. “She mentioned liking the new Proenza Schouler a lot.”

Patrick gives him a funny look. “Man, I don’t have money for that. She can get it for herself if she really wants it.”

Because oh, Adam forgot. Sophia Sun’s family is fabulously wealthy, but she sometimes seems like she isn’t. Patrick’s family is unfabulously unwealthy, and he only acts like he owns everything the sun touches. Pun intended. Because Patrick is confident, a little egotistical at times, and everybody’s best friend. He’s never had a problem accepting what his girlfriend wants to give to him. They are, after all, a matched pair.

“What are you getting her?” Patrick asks conspiratorially. 

“A tree,” Adam says with a smile.

“Another bonsai?” Patrick asks. Adam nods. “You guys and your inside jokes. I’ll never understand.”

Adam makes an unhelpful face. “Like you guys don’t have inside jokes, too.” he says, unapologetic, but he knows Patrick doesn’t really mind at all.

“Yeah, but we’re dating,” Patrick says, turning up his nose. “Sorry, not sorry. Not like all your weird jokes about being psychic. Whatevs.”

“Adam’s real good at tarot,” comes a drawl from Adam’s doorway. It’s Ronan, too dressed in a pair of sweatpants probably stolen out of Adam’s drawers, looking beautiful yet touchable.

Patrick gives them another funny look. “Is he?”

Adam laughs. Maybe someday he’ll tell them. 

“Come back to bed, Parrish,” Ronan says, smirking lazily.

Patrick pretends to cover his eyes, but his hands are full with bagels and coats. “Too much information,” he jokes.

* * *

Adam goes back to bed. It’s pretty great.

* * *

The vibration of his cell phone wakes Adam up for the second time. The screen of his phone spells out clearly: _Parrish landline._ Adam doesn’t want to answer, but he does. It still rings a half dozen times before he finds the will to flip it open.

His throat is still raspy with sleep, so he tries a few times before he gets out a “Hello?” 

“Did I wake you?” It’s his mother. “I didn’t know it was that early over there.”

“It’s the same time zone, Mom,” Adam says, blinking to get his eyes used to the dull afternoon light. There’s what Adam assumes is a sticky note that explains why his vision is partly blocked. “I just slept in too long.” 

“Oh, right,” says his mom. But even she knows how uncharacteristic this is for him. Adam peels the sticky note off his forehead. It’s bright orange and reads: _ur lucky I think it’s cute when u snore_. Typical Ronan.

“What is it, Mom?” Adam asks. 

“Just letting you know the check got here okay,” his mom says. There’s a rustling of paper in the background. “How are you?”

“Good, good,” Adam says, smiling to himself and wishing he and his mother had the type of relationship where he could tell her about how content he is, that he’s back together with Ronan. (Hopefully back together with Ronan.) Maybe someday. He knows his mother is no Robert Parrish.

“Papers going okay?” his mom asks.

“Ugh,” Adam groans, frustration breaking through his carefully kept façade of ‘everything’s fine’ just for a second. But a second is long enough. It’s too late to take it back. “I mean, there’s this one paper that I just can’t get through for some reason.”

“What class?” 

“Major English Poets.” Adam frowns. He’d almost forgotten about it, but it’s due in a few days. “I know I understand the poem, but I just can’t get the different parts of my argument to fit together.”

“Have you asked your professor for help?” his mom suggests.

Adam looks out the window for a second, gaze lingering on the photostrip he’d stuck up, the one that he and Ronan had taken together while going to some little county fair with the others. Back when they were still together, the first time. “I don’t know, Mom.” But he hasn’t asked for help. He wouldn’t know what to ask.

“That’s their job, isn’t it? Don’t they care if you’re having a hard time?”

“That’s not the point of college, Mom,” Adam tells her.

“Then what is?” his mom insists.

Adam is silent. Maybe one little email doesn’t hurt, after all. He walks over to his desk, runs a finger over the lid of his laptop. “Okay, Mom, I’ll give it a shot.”

* * *

Oscar’s sitting in the common room when Adam finally leaves his room. He’s bent over the table, wearing reading glasses that make him look a little silly, even sillier than his usual snapback. From the thickness of the book propped in front of him, he’s studying organic chemistry.

“Orgo, huh,” Adam says sympathetically.

“Don’t even start,” Oscar groans. “You’re not pre-med, you don’t understand my woes.”

Usually, this just makes Adam more anxious about his own inability to commit to a major, but today, he just shrugs and smiles. “Yep, no woes over here. Not even that 20 page English paper I still haven’t finished. None at all.”

Ronan’s bag still sits in the corner next to the futon. Oscar notices him looking for it, because he raises an eyebrow. “You know, I’m pretty sure someone didn’t sleep on the futon last night. I don’t know, Adam, looks woe-free to me.”

“I was kind of scared he’d left,” Adam admits.

“Ronan?” Oscar says, confused. Then, he nods. “Oh yeah, does he still have class tomorrow?”

Now it’s Adam’s turn to ask: “Ronan? Ronan isn’t a student.”

Oscar’s brows furrows. He reaches up to adjust his glasses. “Are you sure? I could’ve sworn he said he goes to VCU.”

Oscar could be mistaken, but at this point, nothing would surprise Adam.

* * *

As Adam walks out of his building, his breath leaves visible condensation with every exhale. He almost stops for a second, too busy breathing and watching the vapor reform and dissipate. The cold has finally set in, so maybe the weather’s going back to normal patterns for the winter. He hugs his coat tighter around himself.

* * *

It only takes him one try to find Ronan.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asks, sliding Ronan’s legs off the bench so he can sit next to him. Ronan lets him. He’s a sly smile against the white walls of the art gallery, an edge of a painting peeking out from behind him. The bright colors perfectly delineate the angles of his profile, even the smooth muscles of his arms, though orange is not quite Ronan’s color. 

Ronan snorts. “You’re gonna have to be more specific.”

“VCU?” Adam asks.

“VCU arts,” Ronan corrects. “I’m a fucking art student now, how about that.”

“Oh.” Adam says. He looks around surreptitiously. That explains so much. 

“Not this. Sculpture,” Ronan adds, seeing Adam sneak a look at the very orange painting next to them.

“So, then…” Adam trails off, taking it all in. Ronan, studying art. Studying sculpture. Huh. He suddenly very clearly gets the image of Ronan in a dream, fashioning everything out of nothing: Ronan with impossible flowers, Ronan with the most frightening of fantasies. The whimsical, the intricate, the curious, and the realistic. Just Ronan, surrounded with impossible beauty.

“Why did you think I was up in Rhode Island?” Ronan asks, narrowing his eyes dangerously. 

“Well, I would say visiting Gansey, but you’re obviously just going to tell me I’m wrong,” Adam retorts.

Ronan looks down, almost shy all of the sudden. “Yeah, but. There was a show/conference thing at RISD.” His eyes flicker over to Adam, fast as a candle flame, and he adds, “Rhode Island School of Design. It’s right next to Brown.”

It’s only then Adam realizes everyone else must know: Blue, Gansey, probably even Patrick. But not him. Ronan hadn’t told him, for some reason or another.

“Because I wasn’t ready to,” Ronan says finally. “It’s kind of a new thing. Just finished my first quarter and all that.” 

So Ronan wasn’t ready to tell him. Instead he had just let Adam shit on him, again and again. Adam closes his eyes, gives himself a minute to process this all, put everything in its proper place. A minute to not hate himself for it all. It’s probably not long enough, but it was worth a shot.

“Right,” Adam says. “Can I see it? Your sculptures?”

“Yeah, the next time we’re both home. I’ve got a space in the Barns.” Ronan says. He’s still fidgeting with his wristbands, not quite meeting Adam’s gaze. “Matthew didn’t need a bedroom, anyway.”

“Two weeks,” Adam sighs. He thought this nostalgia would fade after time, that he’d learn to stop thinking of Henrietta of home, but it turns out that homesickness is something you can only get used to. But now, with Ronan here, it’s a little less bitter.

“Two weeks,” Ronan agrees. He finally looks up and Adam can’t stop himself from touching Ronan, touching the tender skin beneath his left ear. For once, their roles are reversed: he’s the one just feeling and doing instead of overthinking everything. _How did we get here?_ Adam wonders. Everything’s changed, but somehow they are still here together.

There’s a moment where they just sit there, Adam stroking Ronan’s neck, but otherwise giving Ronan space. The paintings linger behind them, a hazy backdrop to this new, promising scene in their story.

“I didn’t want you to be proud of me, but I kind of needed it,” Ronan admits. Adam wishes he’d never made Ronan doubt him. But no matter how much magic they find in their lives, he’s never found a way to go back in time. Maybe that’s okay. He can prove it to him now.

Adam moves his hand to the back of Ronan’s neck, pulls him in for the kiss he’s desperate for.

Ronan meets him halfway.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought that this was gonna be my first and only fic, a one-time thing where I apparently finally learn to how to do dialogue tags, but I have a few more ideas. May or may not be writing a sequel-ish thing from Ronan’s pov. Stay tuned.
> 
> Fun fact: The towel lingers from my original outline, when I was envisioning shower sex, but then I remembered how gross dorm showers are, so. Not hot.

**Author's Note:**

> Sophomore year in college is weird and has a very specific tone and set of struggles. 
> 
> So I changed the summary to more accurately reflect how not light-hearted this fic became. Sorry for the confusion.
> 
> The original summary read: “or: the fic I wrote while I should’ve been studing for finals, about people wo also should’ve been studying for finals, but instead get distracted by Ivy League shenanigans and kissing in at galleries.”
> 
> It also wouldn't exist without raewrite's [let's get together before we get much older](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4320051), which, if nothing else put the idea of Adam at Yale in my head.
> 
> edit: i'm on [tumblr](http://miruak.tumblr.com) a little


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